Gravity Assist: Puffy Planets, Powerful Telescopes, with Knicole Colonnicole Colon MIX 1

With more than 4,000 planets known that orbit other stars, scientists have discovered that many of these exoplanets are quite unlike our own. NASA has a whole fleet of spacecraft that look at different aspects of these planets. Currently TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is checking out nearby stars for possible planets. It is helping to identify candidates that future telescopes will explore further. The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will examine the atmospheres of exoplanets and look for clues about whether they are habitable. NASA astrophysicist Knicole Colon describes her work on the Kepler, Hubble, TESS and Webb missions, and takes us on a tour of some of her favorite planets.